Donald Trump’s coup attempt in January 2021 failed to overturn the election; Yet Trump has managed to turn the Republican Party into an increasingly radicalized party that rewards extremism and punishes, if not bans, members who never more boldly attack democracy and the nation’s electoral process.
The Republican Party is now institutionally oriented to work towards the anti-democratic aims of its charismatic leader, Trump.
As we move into the one-year anniversary of the Capitol uprising, we are only now beginning to get a sense of the magnitude of what can now rightly be described as a coup plot, aimed at overturning the final results of a presidential election. , if not planned, through the White House, with Trump’s staff leader, Mark Meadows, serving as the general on the floor for the coup and encouraging the pursuit of excessive proposals and bizarre conspiracy theories from a diversity of co-conspirators, adding members of Congress, as well as state legislators and independent neo-fascists like Steve Bannon, Rudy Giuliani and John Eastman.
It is imperative that the January 6 Congressional Committee, as well as the Department of Justice and other law enforcement agencies, continue to seek all applicable evidence related to this effort to overthrow the country’s democracy and identify the role of the evidence would possibly identify well that individuals, potentially adding to Trump himself, they are to blame for federal crimes stemming from the coup plan, such as obstructing the recount procedure for congressional elections.
If Merrick Garland doesn’t blame Trump and his conspirators, our democracy is delivered.
However, regardless of the additional facts that are established through congressional and law enforcement investigations, we already know that Trump has achieved a broader purpose of turning the Republican Party into a vehicle for increasingly radical and excessive attacks on the nation’s democratic foundations. is reflected in the fact that Trump no longer wishes to tell his supporters of the internal and external government to play their part in undermining democracy; they are now taking the initiative to anticipate Trump’s preference for excessive action and act accordingly.
Historian Ian Kershaw has described the operating precept of the Third Reich as “working towards the Führer”. Party members waited for the measures their leader wanted, especially attacks on warring and “undesirable” political parties such as the Jews, and took them without being asked. Over time, it has become transparent that those who practiced the measures of maximum radicality, and sometimes the violent maxims, to serve the party would be welcomed with approval, while those who doubted would be welcomed against or worse.
While Trump, of course, is not Hitler, he and his cronies have used a dynamic of praise and punishment to relentlessly lead the Republican Party into a growing dynamic of extremism, in which adherence to legal and ethical norms is perceived as an unbearable weakness.
In 2016, Trump’s top faithful companion, his eponymous son, responded to news that the Russian government illegally aided his father’s presidential crusade by shouting “I love him” in an email and holding an assembly in hopes of “smearing” Hillary Clinton of Russia. In early 2021, after Trump lost the election, Meadows also responded to plans through his fellow extremists to undermine the vote count by “replacing” the electorate duly appointed by Trump by declaring, in the same way, “I love him. “
We do not know if Trump expressly blessed either scheme beforehand, but it is clear that both Don Jr. and Meadows understood that they would risk Trump’s ire if they failed to pursue the most extreme attacks on American laws and democratic norms available in Trump’s name.
The GOP’s dynamic of rewarding extremism, and penalizing restraint, has only strengthened since Trump lost the election. House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy disavowed his initial support for an investigation of Jan. 6, and ultimately supported the sanctioning of Liz Cheney for participating in the Congressional inquiry into the coup attempt. Cheney and fellow Jan. 6 committee member Adam Kinzinger are now facing a call for their expulsion from the GOP caucus from prominent party activists and institutions that are now singularly dependent on Trump, such as Matt Schlapp and the Club for Growth, as virtually all of their House colleagues cower in silence. Meanwhile, McCarthy, recognizing that his hope to be elected Speaker depends on maintaining the support of Trump’s most radical allies, gives free license to members like Paul Gosar, who recently disclosed evidence establishes was an active participant in the coup effort and who recently “joked” about murdering a House colleague.
At the state level, the impetus within the GOP to work towards Trump is likewise even more powerful than it was during the weeks following the election. Trump’s now-infamous call to Georgia Secretary of State Raffensberger, demanding that he “find” additional votes for Trump, failed to induce Raffensberger to corrupt the election, and Trump’s rejection of the election results likely contributed to the runoff losses of both GOP incumbent senators—costing Republicans control of the senate.
However, in the months that followed, Trump’s relentless attacks on Raffensberger and Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp led other Republicans to join the attacks of either for failing to reverse the outcome of the 2020 election and inciting warring parties leaning toward Trump’s extremist timetable for planning key elections. challenges against them, making radicalism the norm in the party.
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The story is the same in many other states, including Wisconsin, where a GOP legislative leader has responded to Trump’s loss there by attacking the state’s bipartisan election commission (including a commissioner he appointed), while some Wisconsin Republican leaders, including Sen. Ron Johnson, are calling for what amounts to a GOP takeover of the administration of elections in the state. In Arizona, an “audit” that confirmed Trump’s loss has nonetheless served as a rallying cry for efforts to undermine voting rights in that state and others. Across the country, people who claim the 2020 election was “stolen” by Biden are running to take control of the local election machinery to ensure that the next election can be stolen by Trump.
While they rarely direct these actions, Trump and his acolytes have praised these extremists while often threatening retaliation against party members who question such a radical approach.
A case in point is Michigan, where Trump supporters have demanded an Arizona-style audit of the election, despite the fact that a GOP-sponsored probe found no evidence of election fraud. A group of Trump supporters, some of them members of the state legislature, have commenced a campaign to intimidate state party leaders to support this audit, as a sign of support for Trump, declaring that their effort is the first step in a “revolution” against the electoral system.
This brings us to January 6. Trump’s speech to a crowd of supporters that day came here after a presidential term in which he blatantly congratulated neo-Nazi rioters, encouraging armed protesters to travel to state capitals to “free” them from COVID restrictions. . brandishes a Bible in front of a church after a crowd of protesters was evacuated by him through a violent attack by police and the National Guard, followed by weeks in which Trump himself had waged a relentless crusade to delegitimize the electoral results, beginning even before they were withheld and employing all legal and political levers that he could simply be relocated in opposition to the will of the people.
The former president says he didn’t tell the crowd that piled up for his Jan. 6 speech to attack the Capitol, but virtually each and every one of those who did realized they were acting in their most productive interests and had any and all explanations of why to their members. Attack would find his approval.
In fact, the evidence that has been revealed in recent months has only added more help to his belief: Trump showed that he didn’t care at all about Pence’s protection during the uprising and that he didn’t even call it the siege. that Trump ignored pleas from internal lawmakers on Capitol Hill, and even Don Jr. and Sean Hannity, to cancel their aides’ seats, as only he could have done.
It is also becoming increasingly clear that, as the siege proceeded, Trump’s acolytes, including Rudy Giuliani, and (as reported by The Daily Beast) possibly Peter Navarro, may well have been employing the disruption in the proceedings as an the opportunity to attempt to encourage more legislators to vote against certification—or to at least to delay it until they could engineer the naming of “replacement” electors.
We now know that in the weeks before Jan. 6, a group of legislators had been working hand-in-glove with Meadows and other Trump allies to implement the coup scheme. Most GOP members of Congress had not joined the scheme. But the insurrection contributed to making more of them more pliant Trump allies. Freshman GOP Rep. Peter Meijer has recounted that, in the immediate wake of the insurrection, a number of his colleagues who had planned to vote in favor of certifying Biden’s election reversed course, some out of fear for their own lives.
Since that time, most GOP politicians have routinely endorsed, or at least chosen not to oppose, the extreme attacks on democracy and the electoral system that have become core tenets of the GOP. As I have previously discussed, appeals to an extremist “base” are now such a central element of the party’s political strategy that GOP “leaders” fear losing support if they don’t support conspiracism and anti-democracy. For example, during a recent Minnesota GOP senate debate, all five of the candidates resisted acknowledging that Biden had won the 2020 election.
Even Trump himself has found that his power as a “leader” of an extremist movement depends on his own reliably continuous appeals to extremism. This was starkly evident last week when Trump himself faced criticism from some of his most fervent followers for acknowledging that the COVID vaccine saves lives, and admitting that he received a booster dose.
In short, extremism is Trump’s calling card, and the force that fuels his movement. Accordingly, whether or not Trump ordered the insurrection, he clearly chose to allow it to continue by his silence, likely because Trump believed the attack on the Capitol served his own ends. And during the months that have followed, GOP activists encouraged by Trump have normalized the goals and even the tactics of the insurrectionists—who are now frequently described by Trumpist Republicans as harmless tourists, or patriots.
The party is working towards Trump.
Read more at The Daily Beast.
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